Hilzoy suggests universal free breakfasts for children at school would be a good anti-poverty policy at a time when we’re expecting a sharp rise in the poverty rate due to the recession. I agree and, indeed, this is one of the five points in the five point plan to end child hunger that Joel Berg and Tom Feeedman released the other day for PPI.
This isn’t really an issue I think about much, but when you stop to consider it the long-run social and economic costs of child hunger and malnutrition are incredibly large relative to the low cost (in historical and global terms) of food in the contemporary United States. Hungry kids wind up having problems in school (understandably) and the consequences to them personally and to the country at large of that skill deficit persist for decades. And that’s to say nothing of contemplating the public health issues in play.
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